BREAKING: The oligarchs are happy to see us like this!

Yesterday, we previewed today's report in this award-wining fashion: "Truly, where to begin?"

We were scanning a list of 23 points concerning our own team's performance in the recent fight over Justice Kavanaugh. Over Here on our team, everyone knows how badly Trump and Graham have performed. But then again, what about Us? What about the various ways our own instincts (and incentives) have failed us all over again?

We wanted to discuss the endless overstatements—for example, the claims that Kavanaugh had "lied" in various cases where he pretty much hadn't. (Nicholas Kristof! Good God!)

We wanted to discuss the silliness of saying, as we scriptedly do, that "only 2-10 percent" of rape accusations are false. Did we really fail to see that this claim, which few people could explain, doesn't necessarily help the anti-Kavanaugh cause?

We wanted to discuss the absurdity of saying to Orrin Hatch (or to anyone else), "Do you believe women?" (As some journalist sillily did, after Hatch had rudely dismissed several female protesters.) Can you believe that anyone in our tribe still thinks that question makes sense?

We wanted to discuss the fuzziness of the Ramirez charge, at least as filtered through The New Yorker, with gratuitous undermining courtesy of the Times. Moving to the next disastrous step, we wanted to discuss the latest disgraceful lunacy by Michael Avenatti, who has clowned us again and again.

Most horrifically in this general area, we wanted to discuss the way Rachel Maddow treated that unsigned letter from Boulder, Colorado—the unsigned letter which supposedly put a fourth credible charge into play. Has anyone ever played the fool more perfectly than Maddow did that night? If that's what our Rhodes scholars do, what hope can there possibly be for our tribe's rank-and-file?

We wanted to discuss the way Blasey Ford's accusation became publicly known, despite her request for confidentiality. (In her testimony, she seemed to say that she never wanted her charges to be passed on at all.) We wanted to discuss the way Senator Feinstein waited and waited and waited and waited before finally saying, in fairly ridiculous fashion, that she and her staff didn't leak Blasey Ford's charge to the press.

We wanted to discuss the astonishing way Feinstein tried to pin the blame on Blasey Ford's friends when she finally managed to say that she and her staff didn't do it. We wanted to show you who Ryan Grim's reported sources were when he filed this initial report.

(Quoting Grim: "Democratic sources said." He didn't say he got the story from Blasey Ford's friends.)

We wanted to discuss the gong-show discussion Don Lemon led about the insertion of race into a set of Republican accusations (allegedly by "a bunch of old white men") in a case in which everyone was white.

Has there ever been a dumber discussion than the one Lemon led that night? We wanted to show you what conservatives had been hearing on Fox about this reflexive "racialization of everything that happens on the face of the earth" which has now become a low-IQ trademark of our failing tribe.

(We wanted to show you the ages of the "old white men" in question. Did you know that three of the Republican senators on the committee are younger than Lemon is?)

(One of the "old white men," Ted Cruz, is 47 and Hispanic. In fairness, the census would list him as a white Hispanic. When George Zimmerman was described that way, our liberal tribe spilled over with incredulous souls who had never heard of such a thing.)

Are we supposed to "believe the women," as somebody yelled at Hatch? We wanted to tell you what conservatives have been hearing on Fox about the Keith Ellison case in Minnesota, and about our tribe's alleged hypocrisy in that matter. As liberals, we're shielded from hearing about such matters on our own cable channels.

Beyond all this, we wanted to talk about the widely repeated claim that Blasey Ford was "incredibly credible"—the claim that she was "the most credible witness we could possibly have," the claim by a federal prosecutor turned MSNBC legal analyst that he "never had a single witness anywhere near as effective and credible as she was."

On the channel where We Liberals get propagandized every night, claims like that last one were common—and at least six different pundits said that Blasey Ford was "incredibly credible." At times of tribal war like these, tribes feed on overstatement.

For ourselves, we know of no reason to think or believe that Blasey Ford's account is false in any significant way. But we also can't swear that her account is accurate, and we could spend all day describing possible witnesses who would be more effective, through no fault of Blasey Ford's, in a case like this.

That doesn't mean her account is false. It means we're being endlessly propagandized by corporate hacks on Our Own Cable Channels.

Over on Fox, people are often being grotesquely propagandized. (Often, but not always.) But they're also hearing accurate presentations about how phony and foolish we are Over Here. They're hearing that Avenatti is crazy. They're hearing, over and over, that Democrats outed Ford.

Avenatti undercut Blasey Ford badly. Maddow acted like an unsigned, possibly deranged letter from Boulder actually counted as the latest credible accusation. Could she possibly have believed that? Or were we being fed tribal porridge to make us feel tribally good?

On our channels, no one asked how Blasey Ford's account got released despite her express request for confidentiality. We're not a smart or honest tribe. In truth, we aren't especially rational animals, and we're constantly serviced by hacks.

It's been like this for thirty years, through two generations of bullroar. (For 24 years, we twiddled our thumbs as Hillary Clinton got slimed, often in misogynistic ways by our own tribal gods.) Our decades of lazy indifference and vast gullibility have ended with Donald J. Trump in the White House and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

That said, to what did we return last night on our own cable channels? To feel-good piddle about the upcoming election—the same kind of piddle we got dumped on our heads back in 2016.

Back then, Hillary Clinton couldn't possibly lose. Last night, the hacks were saying there was no way we could lose this election.

We're silly and hapless and not very smart. The oligarchs are happy to see us like this. As Plato understood all too well, oligarchs play to win.

3:50 has feelings of inferiority that are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself hence the hysterical personal attacks when he is confronted with an accurate criticism of his identified group to which he has no rational and reasonable response. Ironically, he's the one who has been played for a bitch all this years. There's so much more misery and defeat to come for him.

Black people killed. Racialization is all you know. It's the only trick in your book. Ironically, you don't care about black people. You just consider them to be inferior and therefore identify with your conception of them because you think of yourself as inferior. And really, you are. These attacks are just an outlet for your feelings of inferiority and bed wetting fear of anything strong and successful. Yes let's meet and you can show me what a tough strong man you are.

What did Democrats do with the opportunity of 8 years of a black presidency? Caused the murder of thousands of black men as a result of police officers' fear of being prosecuted for protecting them in their cities, and the remainder of blacks believing they live in a country that "hates them." Good work, geniuses.

"3:50 has feelings of inferiority that are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself..."

3:50 is in the military? Or do you mean he lives in the United States of America, as opposed to the Republic of 3:50?

Are you, dembot, implying that the story told by the Starr Report, of Bubba The Demigod shoving, in the WH oval office, his 50 y.o. genitalia into the oral cavity of his own 21 y.o. intern, is not factual?

Somerby's post is filled with insinuations, rather than convincing argumentation. For example, what Kristof report is he referring to? Did Kavanaugh lie under oath? What lunacy from Avenatti is he referring to? What letter from Boulder did Maddow apparently discuss, and what was the context? Which tribal journalist supposedly yelled "Do you believe women?", and what was the context surrounding the question?

Of course, Somerby says he "wanted to discuss" these things, but he has clearly chosen not to do so here.

And believe it or not, the oligarchs are smiling at Bob Somerby when he writes unsubstantiated posts like this.

Someone notes, correctly, that the Senate judiciary committee Republicans are a bunch of (mostly) old white men, and that is supposed to be a "racialization of everything that happens on the face of the earth"? Some people are awfully sensitive when the truth is pointed out to them. It's almost as if *they're* the ones guilty of "racialization of everything that happens on the face of the earth."

In a post about the supposed failures of "Us", Somerby criticizes the following: Kristof, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Maddow, Don Lemon, etc. But based upon many previous TDH posts, these people and entities are not part of our tribe; they are "pseudoliberal careerists", and as such are presumably beholden to the oligarchs. In which case, why does Somerby lump them in as blameworthy with the rest of "Us"? Are "we" responsible for the oligarchical control of the mainstream media? Rather, the truth is that Democrats, liberals, and progressives do not get fair treatment at the hands of the mainstream media. But Somerby's frequent blurring of the lines echoes and fuels the standard right-wing identification of the aforementioned entities with "liberals." He is thereby doing a disservice to progressive interests.

I didn't think I'd be saying the Republicans are looking like the adults in the room at least as long as Trump was in office, but at the Kavanaugh confirmation that was exactly the sense I and I'm sure most of the audiences watching had. Even stranger, Donald Trump appeared to be an adult and in remarks during the press conference with Nikki Haley he continued the two day tradition. As he ticked off the NK and NAFTA achievements among others and coming off the GOP's Kavanaugh victory which was really more a self-own by Democrats who are increasingly defined by their uncontained emotionality, it becomes clear Trump has better political instincts than Clinton or Reagan and the intelligence of both combined.

And as the tribes war away in your own comment section, Bob, perhaps you can ask yourself why your posts don't tend to cause more reflective self-aware commentary, and instead seem to heighten the conflict.

And be specific Bob: who exactly are the oligarchs who have "won"?Apparently, the liberals/Democrats/progressives are not the oligarchs, in your view. Because, apparently, the confirmation of Kavanaugh is a "win" to the oligarchs, you seem to be saying. Do they manipulate the Republicans/right-wing as well, or are they on their side? A little clarity would be in order. Because, according to most polls, rank and file Republicans are quite happy with Kavanaugh.

"Believe the women" doesn't mean literally believe everything they say and act upon it. It means takes their complaint seriously enough to investigate it and charge wrongdoers where warranted.

Men may think this already happens. It doesn't. In many cases, when women make an accusation, they are disbelieved. They are called hysterical or crazy or too drunk to remember or venegeful liars. The police may take a complaint but then someone from the DAs office explains that even if the perpetrator were caught, these cases are too hard to get a conviction on, so no effort will be made to find or convict whoever committed the crime. So women don't go to the police. The same thing happens in work settings, except the women who claims to have been harmed is often demoted or fired while the perpetrator keeps his job. She gets slut shamed while great care is taken to protect the person accused.

This is called guilty until proven innocent. In other words, the person who was harmed cannot make a charge without further injury while the perpetrator goes free -- because 2-10% of the time an accusation might be false. That means 90-98% of the time, women are harmed without redress. And when I say harmed, I mean raped, murdered, beaten, drugged, groped, forced to participate in lewd acts or exposure -- and all the time, she is being intimidated, frightened, threatened in her sense of safety where she lives or works or socializes. 90-98% of the time!

But Somerby thinks this is something not worth yelling about. He thinks boiling all this down to a slogan such as "Believe the women" means someone is literally saying believe the without any investigation or trial -- as if that's what any reasonable person would expect. I think he suggests this because what he wants is for women to be automatically disbelieved, so that men can do whatever they want sexually without any concern for how it affects others or whether it is legal. He thinks men's peace of mind is worth more than women's peace of mind -- even though it is men who are initiating and perpetrating these acts, not women.

When he objects to "believe the women" he is no better than the person who says "all lives matter" when he means that blacks are yelling too much about something that doesn't really happen enough to be upset about.

If Somerby were a liberal in any sense, he would be concerned to find himself and Orrin Hatch on the same side of anything.

I think (1) Somerby has been watching too much Fox News, (2) Somerby is becoming elderly and doesn't process info as well as he used to, (3) Somerby is bewildered by young people and their concerns, (4) Somerby hasn't bothered to read the stuff that provides context and background to liberal issues, (5) Somerby needs to stop writing this blog and step out of politics and most of all, stop calling himself a liberal.

You have 2 choices regarding "believe the women" and "Black lives matter" as slogans. You can insist that the people who are taking them the wrong way need to change their interpretation, which isn't going to happen because a certain percentage of those people are deliberately misinterpreting their meaning as a means of propaganda.

Or you can support liberals making better choices in their slogans. Maybe "take women seriously" and "Black lives matter too." Conservatives have succeeded in large part because they take their messaging seriously, from Gingrich's Luntz-approved list of adjectives to the talking points used each day on the propaganda outlets. If we want to be effective, we need to take our messages just as seriously.

Actually, the only black lives that matter to this group are blacks who are killed in confrontations with the police, not the 97% of blacks who are killed violently by people other than the police. But this dare not be discussed.

I don't understand how Somerby can complain that Democrats didn't find a perfect enough victim to call credible. Does he think they ran an ad and hired the best person? It sounds like he thinks Democrats cooked up their victim, instead of supporting the person who came forward after actually being assaulted.

Kavanaugh picked his victim(s) back when he was in high school. The Democrats didn't do it, Kavanaugh and his buddies did. They are what they are, because they weren't manufactured to suit, but came that way because of the crime.

Somerby probably doesn't even realize how insulting he is being to women who are survivors of sexual assault. They too didn't seek that status and they aren't doing this to mess with men or with Republicans. They want men to take seriously crimes involving sexual assault. That means renewing the Violence Against Women Act, the expiration of which no one has mentioned, not on either side. It means not putting an abuser on the Supreme Court. It means holding Trump accountable for his crimes (he deserves a trial, due process, to be proven guilty by something beyond his own words). It means changing corporate culture and campus culture so that workplaces and schools are safe for women, not just giving lip service with ribbons on the lapel. It means listening to what women are saying when they "scream." How did men's ears become so delicate that they cannot hear Hillary's screechy voice, or women's complaints without namecalling?

Somerby is like an unsuccessful Louis C.K. He has all the bad attitudes but none of the comedic talent. He not only doesn't understand why his rant today is dismaying, but he doesn't care. He is worried about the guys and himself and he doesn't give a damn about why women might be yelling at men in elevators.

And that's worth a whole column? He is saying she isn't credible, just like the Republicans did. She's credible but not worth believing. Does it matter what adjective Democrats used? If they said very credible would Republicans say yeah, we see what you mean?

The Porn Lawyer party found a non-credible accuser they threw at the nomination at the last minute but the hail mary attempt blew up in their faces spectacularly. Republicans and independents were freshly reminded of the unhinged, anti-social nature of Democrats including their leadership.

Restaurant thuggery helps too and we can hope Hillary's sage advice will be heeded, guaranteeing more of the same between now and election day.

POWERFUL SPELL CASTER THAT BROUGHT MY EX HUSBAND BACK INTO MY LIFE AFTER HE LEFT ME EMAIL HIM VIA EMAIL INFINITYLOVESPELL@GMAIL.COM OR INFINITYLOVESPELL@YAHOO.COM ADD HIM ON WHATSAPP +2348118829899

Hello my fellow friends online I'm Diana Gilbert from USA, I want to use this medium to thank Dr Great because he brought back my Ex husband. my husband left me for his ex girlfriend he had before he married me it's a difficult situation for me I called and beg him to come back he refused he said he don't love me anymore I tried every possible way to get him back all was in vain I told my friend about it and she gave me Dr Great email and I emailed him and told him my problem and he told me what to do and I did it and he cast a love spell which brought back my husband within 24 hours. If you need help in getting back together with your Ex, email Dr Great at infinitylovespell@gmail.com or infinitylovespell@yahoo.com WhatsApp him +2348118829899

POWERFUL SPELL CASTER THAT BROUGHT MY EX HUSBAND BACK INTO MY LIFE AFTER HE LEFT ME EMAIL HIM VIA EMAIL INFINITYLOVESPELL@GMAIL.COM OR INFINITYLOVESPELL@YAHOO.COM ADD HIM ON WHATSAPP +2348118829899

Hello my fellow friends online I'm Diana Gilbert from USA, I want to use this medium to thank Dr Great because he brought back my Ex husband. my husband left me for his ex girlfriend he had before he married me it's a difficult situation for me I called and beg him to come back he refused he said he don't love me anymore I tried every possible way to get him back all was in vain I told my friend about it and she gave me Dr Great email and I emailed him and told him my problem and he told me what to do and I did it and he cast a love spell which brought back my husband within 24 hours. If you need help in getting back together with your Ex, email Dr Great at infinitylovespell@gmail.com or infinitylovespell@yahoo.com WhatsApp him +2348118829899

POWERFUL SPELL CASTER THAT BROUGHT MY EX HUSBAND BACK INTO MY LIFE AFTER HE LEFT ME EMAIL HIM VIA EMAIL INFINITYLOVESPELL@GMAIL.COM OR INFINITYLOVESPELL@YAHOO.COM ADD HIM ON WHATSAPP +2348118829899

Hello my fellow friends online I'm Diana Gilbert from USA, I want to use this medium to thank Dr Great because he brought back my Ex husband. my husband left me for his ex girlfriend he had before he married me it's a difficult situation for me I called and beg him to come back he refused he said he don't love me anymore I tried every possible way to get him back all was in vain I told my friend about it and she gave me Dr Great email and I emailed him and told him my problem and he told me what to do and I did it and he cast a love spell which brought back my husband within 24 hours. If you need help in getting back together with your Ex, email Dr Great at infinitylovespell@gmail.com or infinitylovespell@yahoo.com WhatsApp him +2348118829899

I'm Dr Ogudugu, a real and genuine spell caster/Spiritual healer with years of experience in spell casting and an expert in all spells, i specialize exclusively in LOVE SPELL/GET REUNITE WITH EX LOVER, MONEY SPELL, POWERFUL MAGIC RING, ANY COURT CASES, FRUIT OF THE WOMB, HIV CURE, CURE FOR CANCER, HERPES, DIABETE, HERPERTITIS B, PARKINSON’S HERBAL CURE, BECOMING A MERMAID, BECOMING A VAMPIRE, SAVE CHILD BIRTH. They are all %100 Guaranteed QUICK Results, it most work. If you have any problem and you need a real and genuine spell caster to solve your problems, contact me now through my personal Email Address with problem case...Note-you can also Text/Call on WhatsApp.